[Kiwami]

I watched it earlier this week but didn’t like it very much. It featured the worst aspects of Rider V-Cinema, a redundant story, pointless new characters that try way too hard to integrate themselves into the established history of the show, and a super anticlimactic way of trying to tie up loose ends.

As much as I didn’t like it the story was actually the strongest part of it all, we finally get an explanation to Jin's resurrection, and the setup of the Solds calling Metsubojinrai back into action was nice. It still all felt a bit superfluous though.

The worst part was definitely Lyon Arkland though. What a terrible, annoying character. I don’t know if they told the actor to play the role like a bootleg Tony Stark with the emotional range of a toddler or if that was his decision but it was awful either way. And trying to tell me they named the Ark after him - hell no, I hate it. Now I can never look at any Ark-related Rider without having to think of this clown.

Another terrible idea - having them kill Azu. Now, Azu was never really that important, it was always very much apparent that they just tried to somehow involve a long-haired Izu into the story that was featured in the opening on a whim, but the way they disposed of her was terrible. Like, this is how it ends? It was so sudden that I almost feel like they did in on purpose to have her show up again in the next movie as the actual villain and try to make it a surprise.

Metsubojinrai as a Rider was rather meh. Suit design is bad, I did like the computer voice and cliché robot walk, but the form does nothing special except punch and kick real hard. Sometimes with weird computer effects that really don’t add anything. The action as a whole was quite boring to watch as well.

My favorite part in the entire thing was Horobi, because he was treated perfectly as his character very much reflects the ending of the show and him trying to fit into this new world.

So all in all a rater bad attempt at a Zero-One V-Cinema IMO. I will watch the next one just to see how the story continues but I'm not particularly looking forward to it.